Wolf and Bird: Part Two

I'm more or less working exclusively on this at the moment, so here's the second part, which I hope is fun and interesting for you.

* * *

The breeze sifted its fingers through the whistle-grass, over the grit-smooth pebbles, onto the sand beneath. Patterns of white dust moved like ghosts toward the sea. Florida Cain sat cross-legged on a sand dune above the empty beach. She powered up her digital camera and held it to the landscape, framing the chipped mirror-grey sea with a ridge of dry grass.

Florida’s parents had been up late the night before, having a Talk. A Talk about Problems. A Talk about Florida. A Talk about Life. Florida was seventeen. Her hair was too long, her laugh was too loud, her hobbies were too many and all-consuming, and her clothes were wrong. That day she was wearing a vintage air hostess uniform which she’d found on eBay and paid for with her mother’s credit card, a denim jacket, legwarmers, four rings, white sunglasses, and tennis shoes. And a camera. A professional one with a big zoom lens.

Photography was one of Florida’s better hobbies: by encouraging it, her parents seemed to want to lead her away from the others – the protracted soundtracking of her best friend Nina’s unproduced screenplays; the way she assigned an animal to everyone she knew based on their personality or appearance; the sending of long typewritten letters to her favourite musicians at their home addresses (not to mention the musician who wrote a short, handwritten letter back to her that said “girl you really fucking make me laugh” and “I can’t believe you know my home address, that’s actually a little weird”); the MySpage page Florida and Nina ran, where people sent in their secrets through private message and had them published anonymously. The page had 70,000 hits.

Florida didn’t understand what was so worrying about these things. She didn’t even understand what was worrying about the biro graffiti beside the mirror in one of the bathrooms in school that said, “Florida Kane likes girls”. Firstly, as she pointed out to Nina, they didn’t even spell her name right (“which other Florida could it be?” Nina replied), and secondly, it was such a cheery example of graffiti: it didn’t have any swears in it or anything. And although the aesthetic choices were questionable – ballpoint pen on painted brick meant the letters had to be scrawled several times over – the overall sentiment was quite positive. The thought of Florida liking girls indiscriminately, liking every girl all the time, was a good thought.

“They mean you’re a lesbian,” Nina had said.

Florida was not unaware of this. It just still didn’t seem like a big deal. So how could an air hostess dress and a letter from Arizona be a big deal? Her parents’ fear that Florida’s weirdness would end up isolating her was beginning to isolate her. She started examining herself a little more. What other friends did she have, besides Nina? Why did she not know who Ross and Rachel were? Why had she insisted, at age seven, on changing her name to Florida (why not at least California or Manhattan? why the old people state?) and then stuck with that name ever since? What was wrong with her? She resented her strangeness, and then she resented her parents for making her feel strange, and then they took her on a holiday to the South of France.
So here she was. Click. Taking pictures. Click. Like a normal girl. Click click click. Sea, sky, little ridge of grass, all very normal, thank you come again.

Then she saw someone.

It was a boy. Or it seemed to be a boy. Standing behind her, looking out toward the sea. He was tall and slender, with a narrow frame, dressed in tapered jeans and a grey sweater and a wide-collared black coat with two rows of buttons. The white dawn was reflected in his pointy patent shoes. He looked strange. His hands were small and pretty; his skin was clear; his face was delicate, finely-boned. He made Florida shiver. She made him yelp by taking his picture.

“Hi,” he said, sounding strangled. “I didn’t know you were…”

She got up. “Hi. I’m Florida.”

“I’m – Jared.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Jared is an unusual name.”

He smiled at the side of his sleepy mouth, as if he was bemused. “So is Florida.”

“It’s not my real name,” she said matter-of-factly.

He frowned. “So… what’s your – is that like a fake name, or…?”

“I changed my real name.” She took his picture again. “I changed it to Florida ages ago.”

“Um – what are you – why are you taking pictures of me?”

She studied the small screen on her camera. His face looked fragile and feminine.

“Jared? Not that it’s any of my business, but are you a boy or a girl?”

“I’m – wow, okay, no, I’m a boy.”

She looked at him again. “No offence. Just so I know which folder to put these in, you know.”

A breeze lifted from the sea stirred his hair. He pulled his collar up with slim white fingers. “Is it, like, legal for you to take pictures of me without my consent?”

“Yeah, sure. But I’ll stop if you really want.”

He looked at her for a moment. “What time is it?” he said.

“Nearly seven.”

“I’m sort of lost, actually.” She took another picture and he just laughed to himself and continued: “You wouldn’t know where Lot B27 is?”

“It’s…” She stood on her tip-toes and pointed back across the glinting roofs, “… kind of, okay, do you see the watchtower there?”

“Yeah.”

“Down from that. That way.”

“Ah. Okay. No, yeah, I got it. Thank you.”

She smiled and lifted the camera again. “One more.” It clicked and he smiled and shook his head. “It was nice meeting you, Jared.”

“Right. You too.”

He walked off, down the dry slope, and she sat down and stared out at the white sky, picking at the laces of her shoes.